Guy Kawasaki: Being Remarkable
Episode 61 of the Design Better Podcast
Guy Kawasaki has certainly had a remarkable career. From gaining popularity as the Chief Evangelist at Apple for the Macintosh computer in the 1980’s, to authoring fifteen books, to hosting the Remarkable People podcast, Guy has made a habit of trying new things During our conversation with Guy, we talk about why it’s important to be able to make a sale, no matter what your role is. We discuss the start of his career at Apple, and how he got developers to write software for a relatively unknown platform. And we ask his advice for people just getting started in their own careers, whether that’s in tech, writing, or entrepreneurship.
Bio
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast. He is an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley), and adjunct professor of the University of New South Wales. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has written Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and eleven other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
Summary (via ChatGPT 🤖)
Guy Kawasaki, former Apple chief evangelist, talks about his experience working at Apple during the Macintosh era, the importance of user experience, and the biggest barriers to collaboration within a team.
Facts
🍎 In 1983, Kawasaki worked at Apple to convince developers to write software and create hardware products for the Macintosh.
🙏 Evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning "bring the good news," and Kawasaki's job was to bring the good news of more creativity and productivity with the Macintosh to developers.
👐 Apple's approach focused on a humane user experience, which was a key differentiator from other platforms at the time.
🧐 Kawasaki believes that upper management, specifically the CEO, is the biggest factor in a company's output and success because they demand a certain elegance and aesthetic.
😦 Lack of empathy is the biggest barrier to collaboration within a team, especially when it comes to the appearance of the product and the user interface.
❤️ Kawasaki's different roles, such as being the chief evangelist of Canva, podcasting, and teaching, don't tie together in a plan. He falls in love with stuff and goes for it.
🧠 Kawasaki has a hypergrowth mindset, meaning he tries new things and assumes changes can be made.
Transcript
Eli Woolery (00:00):
Guy Kawasaki, welcome to the Design Better Podcast.
Guy Kawasaki (00:03):
Thank you. Thank you.
Eli Woolery (00:05):
It's really exciting to have you here. I've been a fan.
Guy Kawasaki (00:07):
Yeah. You say that to everybody? No,
Eli Woolery (00:09):
I've been a fan of your work since I was, since I was a little guy reading I think was it Mac World magazine
Guy Kawasaki (00:15):
That you wrote or Mack user?
Eli Woolery (00:17):
Yeah, Mac.
Guy Kawasaki (00:17):
So you're saying I'm old
Eli Woolery (00:19):
Or we're all old here.
Guy Kawasaki (00:22):
It's not how old you are. It's how relevant you are.
Eli Woolery (00:24):
That's right. You go that's right. Absolutely. So on that topic guy, could you take us back to 1983? And Apple's about, they're about to air their famous 1984 ad, which you haven't, if you haven't seen it as a listener, you should go watch it. It's one of the best probably advertisements ever made directed by Scott. Take us back to 1983. You're just getting started at apple. Macintosh was relatively unknown at that point. What were some of the steps that you were taking to get developers, to be excited to collaborate with apple?
Guy Kawasaki (00:52):
So 1983 was the start of, for me, what I would call the wonder years, because it was just a time of amazement. And to tell you the truth, I was wondering when there would ever be software, because that was my job. There were two aspects to the wonder years, but it was a time where it was the Macintosh vision. It was a small group of people just insanely active, intelligent people. And I'm not heaping praise upon myself. I'm talking about the other people. So it was a privilege and an honor to work in that division with some of the smartest people I've ever encountered. And of course we work for Steve jobs, which is a once in a lifetime experience. And we were convinced that we were going to prevent a totalitarian 1984 dystopian utopian world by shipping a computer. I mean, that's how much we believed in it.
(01:53):
So it wasn't shipping another computer. It was changing the world, denting the universe, preventing the end of democracy. It sounds may to be a little facetious now, but really we did believe that. And it was just a remarkable time. So my job was to convince people, to write Mac software and create Mac hardware products, because a computer without third party products is basically useless. So my job was to use fervor and zeal, but seldom if ever money to get them to do this. And it was because of evangelism and evangelism comes from a Greek word, meaning bring the good news. So we brought the good news of more creativity and productivity with this computer. We also brought the good news to developers that here is a platform that finally had the richness of Ram that you could write the software that you always dreamed of writing. So this is, we are giving you a new palette. Unlike other platforms, you could just create the most insanely great software ever. And so my job was to make them believe in this dream and buy the dream that we had and write great software.
Aarron Walter (03:08):
One of the key differences with Apple's approach and the promise inherent in that 1984 ad is a humane experience versus other platform arms that were very technical, that relied on a high bar for learning. It didn't really have usability built in, had a lot of technical capabilities, but it didn't have a great user experience. And that was a key differentiator for apple. That's still the secret sauce today. Could you talk to us about your perspective on user exper and how that changed the software landscape?
Guy Kawasaki (03:42):
So I came from the apple two world and in the apple two world, you were lucky if you had a 24 by 80 display with four cursor keys to move around where you were on the screen. And one day my friend Mike Bo takes me in the back room of the Macinaw division. This is before I worked for them and he showed me Mac paint and Mac Wright. Now, many people listening to this may not know what Mac paint and Mac wite were, but Mac Wright was a wizzy wiggle processor where you change the font, you change the size, you integrate text and graphics, and it's just like you see it. Mac paint was a painting for program with brushes and tools and lines and fill patterns. So you coming from the apple two world or the Ms dos world, this is as if you know, the scales were removed from your eyes and going from cursor keys to a point and click mouse was remarkable. It was literally a religious experience for me. I thought, oh my God, this is the future. It was that obvious to me
Aarron Walter (04:49):
And how that manifests today as user experience has become so predominant and you've advised and have been involved with lots of startups. And this is often advice given is that we need to, to focus on creating a really compelling user experience, but there are different powers kind of working together, collaborating, hopefully not, not conflicting and building great products and great user experiences. You have product managers, you have engineers and you have designers of those three, which one seems to be the biggest constraint on a company's output and success.
Guy Kawasaki (05:27):
I don't think of those three, the biggest factors in there. I think the biggest factor is probably upper management, maybe specifically the CEO, because in the Macintosh division, the E basically Steve jobs, he demanded a certain elegance, a certain minimalism, a certain aesthetic, a certain sort of philosophy. And I don't think that's true in most companies, especially today, most companies are run by a CEO. Who's relatively clueless about design. And so when you're working for someone that you know is clueless, guess what? You also create clueless user interface, cuz nobody is there to tell you that you have a piece of. So if you're working for someone who doesn't tell you that, arguably how would you know? And so now with Steve jobs, if anything, he told you everything was a piece of that you did. So, you know, he may have the opposite problem, but it would be not that I, I know the restaurant business as well, but you know, if the chef, if the head chef of your restaurant doesn't know what good food is, how are you expected to create great food?
(06:48):
If Gordon Ramsey didn't throw you out half the time, you'd probably be a lousy cook. And so I think that's what the major shoe is that there's nobody at the top to tell you that your design sucks. And I think the most obvious place is this is consumer electronics. So whether it is an AV unit or a digital camera, I mean, if you look at most digital camera designs, I think particularly the Japanese ones it's as if someone sat down there and said, how can we make this menu system the most confusing and opaque possible? Like what's something that people need to do all the time format, your SD card. Well, let's put it in the custom menu. That's the number eighth menu and the 15th choice of the eighth menu, because we don't think they should format it so often. Or I don't know what the thinking is.
(07:50):
And then somebody else may kick in and say, well, but people need to format all the time. So they say, okay, the ninth menu will be a custom menu. So if you can figure out how to find the format, you can put it in your custom menu and assign that to a custom button so that as you're taking a picture of someone surfing or playing football, you're gonna remember, oh yeah, my custom menu is the, this button, the back button while I hold down the thing and I chant something. And from that, I format my SD card. And so that gets through the system and the CEO who probably doesn't even use the camera has no clue that people are suffering out there. I don't understand that at all. To me, it's a total lack of empathy for the customer. And if I may illustrate with another story, Martin Linstrom once told me the story that he had a large pharmaceutical client and they, of course the, they, the executive team expressed the desire to quote unquote, get closer to the customer to develop empathy, right?
(08:56):
So most large companies do that by hiring McKinsey, but Martin Lynch Strom did something different. So he took them all the execs and he made them breathe through straws and just suffice it to say, most execs could not do that very long. And so some of them were actually upset and angry. You know, why are you making us breathe through straws? And the answer was well, that's how someone with asthma lives. So you're a pharmaceutical, you have patients who have asthma. You now can empathize with what it's like to have asthma. And I think that's a great lesson.
Eli Woolery (09:35):
That's amazing story. Given all the exposure you you've had to different teams across different products. And, and assuming that you have a CEO who does understand the value of a well designed experience, what do you see as the biggest barrier to collaboration within a team across engineering product and design?
Guy Kawasaki (09:53):
Yeah. I may be just pounding a dead horse, but I just think it's lack of empathy. That from the appearance of the product and the user interface, it just doesn't appear that the engineers or the marketing people or anyone has any empathy for the customer. Like what actually happens. Let's take a case in point that you might consider ironic, which is apple. So with apple until very recently, if you had a, a MacBook with two or three USBC slots, I just am astounded that, you know, someone could put that out for years now. Maybe I'm totally wrong. And statistically 99.9% of the people with MacBooks only ever plug one thing into it, which is power. But I don't know about you, but like my dongle, okay. I'm not making this up. My dongle had a dongle.
Aarron Walter (10:56):
Yes. I currently we have dons connected to Don's on my own.
Guy Kawasaki (11:00):
How can a Dole have a dongle? Like, excuse me, Tim cook. Do you have a personal valet to download your SD card? Do you have someone who makes your labels for you? Is it connected to a road caster pro are you taking an H DM? I feed out of your DSLR that goes into your ATM mini, that then goes into your IMAX, dongle Dole. Do you ever have to print a label or download or, you know, do you ever have to mix, do you have to do anything except charge? I cannot understand that I am beside myself. Can you tell how I passion? I feel about this
Eli Woolery (11:41):
And then heaven for forbid, you should hit the escape key on the touch bar, you know, while you're composing a message or something like that, done
Guy Kawasaki (11:46):
Million purpose of that touch bar. I mean, so your valet has,
Aarron Walter (11:53):
And they've had to walk a lot of that back.
Guy Kawasaki (11:55):
Yeah, but I mean, well, seven years later you have empathy. All of a sudden you've been breathing through a straw. Your customers have been breathing through a straw using a MacBook for eight years. And now thank God Jonathan I in there cuz Jonathan and I in his English accent will say, we have a revolutionary new MacBook. It has an SD card reader. And it has us B, C, and it has us B a and it has, you know, an open architecture. This is remarkable. No one has ever thought of this before. Well, Jonathan, it was there eight years ago, you know, in 2015 MacBook there, it was there. I hate to tell you, you didn't have to have a dongle for your SD card
Eli Woolery (12:44):
Guy. You did a lot of different things. You write books, you're an entrepreneur, you have a podcast you teach, how do those different things tie together and how do they complimenting each other?
Guy Kawasaki (12:55):
Oh man, you you're framing me with your question. You're assuming that it is tied together. And there's a plan. There isn't a plan. I am Paraic to put it mildly. You could say schizophrenic. I just happen to fall in love with stuff. So today I am the chief evangelist of Canva. It's online graphics, design service. I'm a podcaster and I'm a speaker. And I'll say the bulk of my time is spent podcasting because podcasting is such, it's such, it's just a black hole that you pour time into. And so there is no plan. I just fall in love with stuff I fell in love with. Can I fell in love with Macintosh? I fell in love with podcasting. I just fall in love with stuff and I just go for it. You know, I see you have a surfboard. I, I surf also. That was another thing.
(13:51):
My daughter took it up. I fell in love with it. So I just I'm whole log into it. Now I surf every day, there was no plan. You, nobody plans to take up surfing at 61. Trust me, that is 55 years too late. So that's just a etic nature. I am also a great fan of Carol Dweck. Carol Dweck is the author of mindset. And so basically you can have a growth mindset where you try new stuff. You assume that changes can be made or you have a fixed mindset, which is, this is what I've been dealt with. This is what I can do. I'm not gonna try anymore. I'm just gonna stick with what I'm comfortable. Well, I have a hypergrowth mindset.
Aarron Walter (14:35):
Do you find that as you adopt new things, using your, your phrase, you've fall in love with a new discipline, a new hobby. Do you apply some of those lessons that you learned, let's say from podcasting to other things or from surfing to podcasting startup advising, how does that wisdom transfer in your life?
Guy Kawasaki (14:55):
Well hopefully it does it completely organically. And without thinking, I can't tell you that I sit down and I say, so, you know, what did I learn from the Macintosh vision? And I can now apply to podcasting. Maybe there are people who do that, but I don't. But if you ask me a question like that and I actually gave it some cogent, rational thought, there are many things that I learned from apple case in point that, you know, your current customer cannot tell you how to revolutionize a product or service. They can tell you, I want a better, faster, cheaper apple too, but they cannot tell you, I want you to build a Macintosh, which has a one button mouse, a wizzy wig, user interface. I want it to be totally incompatible with everything I've ever bought for my apple two. And that lesson, you know, I could apply that to podcasting that the people who are currently listening to your podcast could probably not tell you how, how to truly create a great revolution in podcasting. They just want, you know, better, faster, cheaper what you are doing. And that's the challenge.
Eli Woolery (16:05):
So you've learned from the process of creating a podcast. I mean, you've obviously interviewed a lot of great folks from Jane Goodall to Seth go to and, and learn from them. But what about the process itself? What, what has that taught you?
Guy Kawasaki (16:17):
I think the process of podcasting has reinforced a lesson that I learned in writing, which is it's not the act of writing nor the act of recording the way you separate great writers and great podcasters from mediocre ones is your willingness to edit. The editing is the key to writing and podcasting. And so if, if you are someone who believes as a writer or a podcaster that you turn on the record switch, or you get your fountain pen and you sit on your wind, sweat porch overlooking the Pacific ocean, and the words flow from your mind through your arm, through your gold NB fountain pen onto your parchment. And if you believe that's how writing is, boy, have I got some news for you? And so I think the thing I learned the, the most is that it is all about the editing. It is about grinding it out.
(17:22):
I'm a big YouTube fan. I just watch YouTube all day long and not for what many people may be thinking right now. But I love to watch those little documentaries about, you know, this is how a summarize sword is made, right? And you watch this process of, they take these iron fillings and they put them in this oven and it comes out this block of metal. And then they get this block of metal and they pound it and then they fold it over and they pound it and they fold it over and they pound it and they fold it over and they pound it and then they take it. And then they, you know, now it's kind of like a sword and then it's on this grinding wheel. And then finally, you know, months later it's on a Wetstone and all this kind of stuff. That's what podcasting is like, it's you take this piece of metal and you fold it over and fold it over and pounded and pounded and grinded and wet stone it, and finally, it's a podcast and I think that's true of podcasting or writing.
Aarron Walter (18:18):
So true. I think you're a Dan pink fan, is that correct?
Guy Kawasaki (18:21):
Yes. I am a Dan pink fan
Aarron Walter (18:23):
And Dan pink, who we had on the show. He talks about selling as like an essential thing to any job. Doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're a designer, a developer product manager or anything between yeah. That sales is part of it. I'm curious to hear your take on sales and just like the communication process and how you see that as maybe an important tool or maybe not for anyone building a success for career.
Guy Kawasaki (18:50):
Well, I would say that when push comes to shove, there are only two functions in business. You gotta make it and you gotta sell it. And so if you're an engineer, you can make it. And if you're anybody else you better be selling. And so I think it is an essential skill. And I think that many people may too narrowly define selling that selling is when you are asking for an order or you're making a sale at a cash register, or, you know, people are in your, in the checkout or they have their shopping basket and you know, that sale selling. But I think selling is when you're breathing, you're selling. I mean, selling is convincing someone to come on. Your podcast. Selling is convincing someone to sponsor your podcast. Selling is convincing your spouse, that it's okay to work five hours on a podcast.
(19:49):
You know, there may be better thing do and selling is getting an upgrade into first class selling is instead of two side orders. Can I get three? I mean, you, I don't know when you're not selling, frankly, it's, it's hard for me to understand when you're not selling. I think it's an absolutely essential skill. People should not look down on it like this it's this greasy death of a salesman, kind of imoral if not imoral activity, I think it's necessary. It's completely utterly necessary. Politicians are always selling. I mean, when you call up Comcast and you ask them to please pull a line into your house, so you can have high speed internet you're selling, you're not buying, you're selling.
Eli Woolery (20:35):
You got your start and sales guy in the jewelry industry before you went to apple, what were, were any kind of specific key lessons you took away from
Guy Kawasaki (20:43):
That job? Yeah, so this links very well to what we just discussed is before I got into high tech, I was getting a MBA and the MBA program where I went was a four day a week program. So I had the Fridays off and I come from a lower middle class family. So it's not like I'm a trust fund baby. And you know, I could just call dad or mom up and get another, you know, tranch of cash. So I started working for a jewelry company and it was a jewelry manufacturer. So it took golden diamonds and made it into jewelry and sold it to jewelry store. So we didn't sell to the consumer. We sold to the store who sold to the consumer. And that is a brutal, brutal business because when a jewelry store buy is trying to buy, they are trying to buy at the absolute best deal possible.
(21:33):
And at some level it is, you know, gold is such and such an ounce and diamonds are such and such per carrot. And everybody knows that the spot price of gold is X today. And diamonds are a little harder because there's cut and clarity and color. And you know, there's a little bit more magic about whether it's, you know, this kind of diamond or that kind of diamond, but fundamentally a one car de flawless is a one car de flawless. And you can look up and say, okay, a one car de flawless is X dollars. So everything is kind of AAL, expensive commodity, but commodity. And so selling a commodity, no matter how beautiful is a very challenging process, it is hand to hand combat. And I think one of the best things that I ever did, not that I planned it this way was work in the jewelry business because I truly learned you have to sell and how to sell and how to get buyers, to trust you and how to get buyers, to see your dream, that you can't just throw my piece of jewelry on a scale and figure out how much gold there is per ounce.
(22:41):
There's designed there's romance, there's, you know, whatever. And that has been useful for the rest of my life. It was just of best training. So, you know, when people tell me that right after college, if they wanna become a venture capitalist or they wanna work for Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, you know, I would prefer they go to work for Proctor and gamble, learning how to sell Dawn into markets, right. And what it takes to sell Dawn and what it takes to sell Swiss or working for IBM, calling on people. I think sales training early in your career is so, so valuable.
Aarron Walter (23:18):
Absolutely. So selling is a foundational skill for anyone who's getting started in their career. What other guidance do you have for people in that let's say the first five years, like get outta college, how hopefully your degree maybe has some direct
Aarron Walter (23:33):
Support of, of what you're going into, but that's not always how it works. Yep. I studied painting and ended up in software and still like, there's a loose connection. What advice do you have for people like to sort of like get a good foundation of skills that would set them up for success?
Guy Kawasaki (23:48):
Yeah. I think that this concept of the first job having to be perfect is totally flawed that particularly now people are probably gonna have 20, 30 jobs in their career and you might not even remember what you're her first job was. And so I think that in a sense, it really doesn't matter what your first job is. So let's take two extremes. So everybody's trying to find that perfect job with the perfect title, perfect responsibilities to build up your LinkedIn profile so that, you know, you look like you're worth a billion dollars. And then there's the one who, you know, absolutely takes the wrong job, you know, goes to work for. Let's take the worst case. So you have a degree in, I don't know, biochemistry or something, and you go to work for Teo and you think, oh my God, I got a job at Teo.
(24:41):
They got this like world class board, they got unlimited venture capital. They're gonna make it. So you can just put a drop of blood in a device. And it'll like, give you 50 different diagnoses. Like this is the dream job. Well, come to find out all of that's, right? And in fact, criminally. And so I would make the case that that might be one of the most valuable experiences of your life because you, you will see if you work for terrors, assuming you weren't arrested, but assuming you work for terrors and not the person arrested, you would learn about just the sort of bandwagon effect. Like how did so many people pour so much money into something that didn't exist? That's a very valuable lesson. How come nobody screamed that, you know, this is, it's not happening. It's not true where, you know, fake results.
(25:33):
Why didn't someone not tell the Empress that she had no clothes on? I mean, what, what happened there? So there's so many lessons you could learn from a negative experience. The opposite is you go to work and your employee number five at Google. And you know, you just, you had no idea what it was you just said. Okay. So they're recruiting at Stanford. I went to work for Google, who the hell knows what it was. And now five years later, you're worth, I don't know, 200 million bucks. You just grabbed the brass ring. You just did this perfectly outta college. Well, I think the downside of that, although you are wealthy now, the down of that is it's gonna be very hard for the rest of your life, for you to have any sense of humility or to separate causation from correlation. So you may think that you caused the success of Google because you were an early employee and blah, blah, blah.
(26:23):
In fact, you just happened to get on a tsunami and you survived the rising tide in that case, floated all boats. So it's not that you're a great person to really accomplish everything. You just happen to hit the lottery. So those are the two extremes. So all this is telling you that, you know, don't sweat the first job. If you pick something total loser, at least you'll learn from it. If you pick something, that's a total winner, God bless you. You'll be worth a lot of money, but you may become an insufferable for the rest of your life. So one more thing I'd like to address. I think that the P word is vastly overrated. And the P word is passion that you, you hear lots of people saying, pursue your passion, find your passion. And so people who have not found their passion read about this and they think, oh my God, you know, my life is incomplete.
(27:13):
I haven't found my passion. I haven't found this thing that I wanna dedicate the rest of my life to it. And I'm already 22. My God, I'm behind the curve. It's total. So I've think that, you know, the passion test is much too high, a bar to try to overcome the much lower and more rational bar is an interest bar. So this looks interesting. Personal computers look interesting. Podcasting look, interesting. Asian art history looks interesting. So when these interesting things come up, pursue them. And after you pursue a few dozen, maybe you may be able to find a true passion, but to start off thinking, I read, I gotta find my passion. That is not how the world works. I am 67 years old. And I found my passion for podcasting at 65. So I, you could make the case for the first 65 years of my life. I did not have a passion, although that's not true. I had Macintosh and Campbell, but give yourself a break. Don't hold yourself to the passion test
Eli Woolery (28:23):
Guy. You have such a wonderful sense of off optimism. And it's clear that you have a lot of gratitude. And, and one thing I've noticed in my teaching over the past nine years, I've been teaching class at Stanford and students come in, they seem more and more just sort of overwhelmed by the world and, and everything that's going on. And it it's understandable. There's a lot of serious things going on in the world, but you could argue that that's been in the case for entire human history. We, we faced on adversity as a species. So how do you inspire people to, you know, maintain that sense of gratitude and, and hopefulness and optimism?
Guy Kawasaki (28:56):
Well, it's not clear that I actually do that, but I was brought up with a very distinct perspective of no bless ale, which is that my interpretation of this is that, listen, if you're lucky and really it is a lot of it has to do with luck. If you're lucky, you owe it to the rest of society to pay it back and help it out. You know, it's not because as we used to say in Hawaii, it's not that your doesn't stink. You just love, I feel a moral obligation to pay back society. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to paint a picture of guy as the hero who got on the last helicopter being taken out of the American embassy in Vietnam. And, you know, then I landed in Bakersfield and with one suitcase and I lifted myself up by bootstraps, or I haven't had to overcome that kind of poverty.
(29:54):
I haven't had to overcome any kind of medical issues or all that. So I'm not a hero as Charles Barkley would say, I'm not a hero, but on the other hand, it's not like I'm a trust fund baby either. But I was very lucky. I was born into a family where my parents and grandparents made great sacrifices to move from Japan, to come to America, to pick sugar cane in Hawaii. My parents were really big believers in education. So a elementary school teacher told them to get me out of the public school system because I had too much potential and put me in the private school system so that I would go to college. And my parents who were not making a lot of money, did that sacrificed it, that got me into a college prep school, that college prep school to day. I don't know why I applied to Stanford, but somehow I did. And I got in miracle upon miracle. Then I got to Stanford and I loved it. And I met Mike Bo. Mike Bo is the guy who recruited me into apple eventually. And the rest is history. So yes, I worked hard. Yes, I studied. Yes, there was grit and all that kind of stuff. But let's just be honest, man. I just was lucky. And I think one of the realizations is as you get older, that you are lucky. And so if you are lucky, you should help people who may not be as lucky,
Aarron Walter (31:19):
You know, guy, you've got a new book out called wise guy, which encouraged listeners to check out. And in that you talk about adoption. And that was the part that really resonated for me. I'm the father of two adopted African American boys and much of what you said about adoption and how it is so satisfying as a parent to have that experience. It's kind of hard to even put into words, but it's profound is basically the way that I would describe it. And I wonder if you could maybe share a little bit about your decision and, and building your family.
Guy Kawasaki (31:55):
So we have four kids, two of them are biologically ours, my wife and I had sex for two of them, my wife and I did not have sex or the other two. And so those two are adopted from Guatemala. And I will tell you that man, my life would be a lot less awesome if we had stopped with the two. And so, you know, a lot of people may think from the outside, looking in that the adoptive parents are doing a favor to the adopted kids that they're, you know, taking them out of poverty or, you know, whatever. I don't have that attitude at all. I think my kids have done me a favor. They have so enriched my life. So adoption is just a, you know, beautiful, beautiful thing. Now I don't have a bill gates foundation where I'm, you know, ending malaria or anything like that. But I think that, you know, for those two kids, we've really done something to make the world a better place and they have made my life better. My wife's life better. Also when these kids are placed in your arms, that's it? I mean, it is a life changing moment. I feel very strong about that. Adoption is one of the most beautiful things in the world. And, and, and I don't mean just for the kids, obviously. I mean, for the parents too,
Aarron Walter (33:18):
For the whole family, I mean, it's just, it is magical and there's something really magical about the idea of we all came together. Yeah. You know, from different places to create this, this family, which is really profound. Yeah. So guy as we wrap up here, I wonder if you could share with us what you are currently excited about something you're reading, watching, learning, listening to that you might wanna share with others.
Guy Kawasaki (33:46):
Oh my, well, I keep returning to this, but I just love podcasting. My only regret with podcasting, like surfing and like hockey, which is three of my passions in my life is that I didn't take it up earlier. And I started podcasting two years ago. I should have started five years ago. And I think I was just born for podcasting. I love every aspect of podcasting. I love the prep. In fact, in one hour and 14 minutes, I'm going to interview Julia Cameron. How would guy Kawasaki ever have encountered Julia Cameron before the artist way? Right. And so I was born for podcasting because I have access to people because of my, I don't know, visibility in tech. And I think that I have a way of figuring out some questions to ask that maybe other podcasts are don't just because I don't know why just because just, just the way I'm built.
(34:47):
And I think I have a moral obligation to get the wisdom of a Julia Cameron or a Jane Goodall or a Steve Bosniac out into the world. So I feel like I have a moral obligation to podcast. You, you may tell me guy, you are so full of. Like, you know, what drug are you on? But I really do believe that I love the whole thing. I love the editing, as I've said. And when I die, I want people to say guy empowered people at times in his career. He empowered people with his Evangel of Canva and Macintosh. At times he empowered people with his speaking. At times he empowered people with his writing and I especially want them to say, and he empowered me with is podcasting because he exposed me to people that I never would've been exposed to. So that's what I want on my EPIA.
Aarron Walter (35:47):
That's great. And speaking of where can people learn more about everything you're doing, including your writing and your podcasting and speaking so forth?
Guy Kawasaki (35:55):
Well, the, there is guy kawasaki.com, but really, if you really wanna see what I'm into, just listen to my podcast. And that is remarkable people.com.
Aarron Walter (36:06):
Fantastic
Eli Woolery (36:07):
Guys. So great. Having you on the show. Hopefully we can go for a surf together sometime.
Guy Kawasaki (36:11):
Yeah. Well, as if you would just take up longboarding. Sure. Cause I taking up shortboarding